US President Donald Trump’s plan to cut hundreds of millions of dollars of funding to the African Development Bank (AfDB) will hit growth on the continent, said Samuel Maimbo, a candidate to take over the leadership of the lender.

The White House said May 2 it would eliminate $555-million in contributions to the AfDB’s main fund for the continent’s least-developed countries, as it was “not currently aligned to administration priorities.” That adds to financing pressures for Africa as other donors simultaneously retreat.

“The decision is significant, and it has a huge impact on Africa’s development,” Maimbo, a vice president at the World Bank, said in an interview this week. “$555-million for the African Development Fund is significant financing.”

The African Development Fund — through which the AfDB provides grants and concessional loans — disbursed 1.12-billion units of account in 2023, equivalent to about $1.5-billion, according to the lender’s latest annual report. The US is the third-biggest contributor to the fund after the UK and Germany.

Maimbo — a Zambian whose candidacy has the backing of two regional blocs — is competing against four other candidates for the top job at the Abidjan, Ivory Coast-based lender.

These include South Africa’s Swazi Tshabalala and Sidi Ould Tah from Mauritania, who recently stepped down as the president of the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa. The election will be held on May 29.

Maimbo described the White House’s cut as a “wake-up call” to diversify Africa’s development-financing sources and said he’d talk to the US to try find a solution.

“I would like to understand what that alignment looks like,” he said. “If indeed it is a permanent non-alignment, then of course we’ll take a different path. If it’s a temporary one, I’d like to address it.”

Neither the US Department of State nor the AfDB replied to requests for comment.

The continent also needs to bring in more private sector money, while reforming the AfDB and increasing its leverage, Maimbo said: “This means approaching pension funds on the continent, approaching other financial institutions so that we can scale up the impact.”

The AfDB is busy with the latest replenishment of the ADF, in which it aims to raise a record $25-billion. Finding money in an increasingly fractured world where developed countries are boosting defense spending and cutting aid is a tough task.

Yet Maimbo points to the record $93-billion IDA20 fundraising he oversaw at the World Bank during the Covid-19 lockdowns. He also raised about $20 000 for charity last year by auctioning his own artwork.

“Taking taxpayers resources from one country to another is going to be a challenging conversation,” he said. “You’ve got to demonstrate more than ever before that every dollar is a good investment for their taxpayers as much as it is the recipient taxpayer.”